Before Dominick Reyes became known for nearly dethroning Jon Jones, he had a different dream. ‘The Devastator’ wanted to play under the bright lights of the NFL. In fact, his MMA career is eerily similar to his football career, where, despite being a promising college football athlete, he failed to make it to the big leagues. His five-round war with Jones and brutal loss to Blachowicz led to a sharp decline, which saw two more brutal KO losses at the hands of ex-champ Jiri Prochazka and Ryan Spann.
As such, his story isn’t just one of cages and knockouts; it begins on the gridiron, where he carved a reputation as a reliable defender. But what position did Dominick Reyes actually play in college football? And how did the disappointment of not making it to the NFL eventually push him toward MMA? Let’s take a closer look at the journey that shaped him.
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Dominick Reyes’ College Football Career
‘The Devastator’ used to be a Division-1 college football player. Growing up in a poor Mexican-American household in Hesperia, California, Dominick Reyes’ parents encouraged him to play sports to avoid getting caught up with the local gangs prevalent in a city ridden with violent crime.
Reyes was a wrestler in high school and pursued football; both activities would prove consequential for him later in his life. While pursuing a B.S. in Information Systems at Stony Brook University in New York, he joined their football team.
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On paper, the NFL looked like the logical next step. But things didn’t unfold as he hoped. That’s where his position comes into focus.
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What Position Did Dominick Reyes Play?
Dominick Reyes played the starting safety on the Stony Brooks Seawolves and showed incredible potential while at it. After all, he made the All-Conference team twice and held the record for the most tackles in Stony Brook history.
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He would go on to become the captain of the team, another clear indication of the caliber of athlete he was (and indeed is, just in another sport). Logically, Reyes felt that the next step would be a spot in the National Football League. So what went wrong? Let’s find out.
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Transition from Football to MMA
‘The Devastator’ attended the combine at the New York Jets’ facility, where everything seemed to be going well for the Hispanic-American fighter. Stature-wise, he was the right build, being bigger than most of the other guys there, and he felt he was performing better than everyone else. Or so it seemed.
“I thought it was going well. When I was doing drills, forward drills, and backpedaling, I had the smoothest backpedal. I covered the most ground. I made my interceptions. I felt like everything was going great… But it didn’t. It didn’t go well, I guess, as I thought it did. I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t work out. And it was crushing. Oh man, it was full-on crushing,” Reyes would recall in an interview.
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In the end, his speed was deemed ‘average’, and Reyes went undrafted in the 2013 NFL draft. While he did try out for the Canadian Football League, his heart was not in it, and he returned home to California, which would serve as the most consequential part of his life.
With his NFL dream ending in an anticlimax in 2013, Reyes was predictably devastated. In 2014, a year after graduating from college and going undrafted in the League, ‘The Devastator’ started working in construction and his father’s cabinetry business. At the advice of his mother, who was instrumental in pulling him out of a dark place, Reyes started training with his brother, Alexander, in the latter’s MMA gym.
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With a background in high school wrestling, he took the logical next step and started his MMA career. But he still seemed to be two minds about committing full-time to his MMA career at this time. Three years after his pro-MMA debut, he took up an IT job at a California school in 2017. That same year, he would make his UFC debut, and Reyes’ purpose finally came calling to him. In 2019, he finally quit his job to concentrate on his UFC career. The rest, as they say, is history.
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So, Dominick Reyes never played a down in the NFL, but his journey from football to fighting made him who he is today. Now, as ‘The Devastator’ prepares for his main event clash with Carlos Ulberg at UFC Perth, he has a chance to regain his position as one of the top contenders in the division and make another run at the elusive UFC gold!